


Trust a few

by smithel



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-20
Updated: 2014-06-20
Packaged: 2018-02-05 11:35:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1817113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smithel/pseuds/smithel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none." Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well</p><p>An AU of the end of season one - what if the liquor cabinet key hadn't snapped? Starts in Trip to the Dentist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trust a few

**Author's Note:**

> I promise I will continue Getting There, but I was re-watching season one and the ridiculousness of a key Logan has presumably used donzens of times snapping irked me - so I started writing. It's such a fraught, emotional point in the series that I found it really tricky, so I hope it feels plausible. The story started out being really fluffy (who doesn't love adorable, giggly early days LoVe?), but angst kept creeping back in... hopefully the fluff to angst ratio is ok.

The key turned smoothly, and Logan deliberated for a moment before pouring a finger of vodka into a highball glass and drinking it smoothly down. He took a deep breath and returned to the pull-out couch, flopping back down next to Veronica. “Now then, where were we?” he asked, rubbing his nose against hers.

“I think we were… somewhere around here,” Veronica murmured, rolling to her side and catching his lips in a kiss.

“Here sounds good to me,” agreed Logan, catching her waist and pulling her against him so that they both lay on their sides. For a long time the only sounds in the room were the gentle smack of lips leaving each other only to join again, the rustle of hands moving over clothing, the occasional breathy giggle. Veronica revelled in the freedom she felt here with Logan, the power she had – here there were none of the hesitations she had had with Troy. In fact she was having trouble thinking at all, wanting only to feel more of him, more of this. In a rush of bravery she hooked her leg over his hip, pulling him close and grinding down when she felt him hard between them. Both moaned, and she repeated the motion, refusing to let any nerves get in the way of what both of them clearly wanted.

At least, what she thought they both clearly wanted, but suddenly Logan pulled back, gasping, and pushed her away with gentle hands. “Veronica, wait,” he said, breathing heavily. “Just hold on a minute.” Veronica sat up, stung.

“Oh my God,” she said. “I thought… I mean, you don’t want…“ She started to get up, only to have Logan pull back on her waist. He knelt behind her, running soothing hands down her arms.

“I do! Believe me, I do,” he insisted. “I just … I want to take this a bit slow. I… I care about you a lot, and we’ve had to deal with a lot the last few days, and… you know, I probably shouldn’t admit this but I’m scared to death I’m going to screw this up,” he admitted, giving her a bashful grin. Veronica’s brow furrowed, trying to figure out where Logan was going with this. He rushed to explain, a large part of him wanting to swallow his own words and go back to where they’d been, to take whatever Veronica was willing to offer, but the revelations of the last few days – not only the shocking discovery that Veronica had been raped, but also an unsettling sense of the depth of his own feelings for her, were making him cautious and skittish.

“Usually when girls are interested in me, it’s because they want to sit at the 09er table, or they want to meet my Dad, or they want me to spend money on them, or they only want, you know… sex.” He explained, awkwardly, moving to sit beside her. “I have kind of a reputation, you know,” he continued, with a hint of his smug grin. Veronica just rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I was hoping that we were… you know, more than that,” he finished, nuzzling into her neck, so that she almost couldn’t hear his final mumbled words. It was the faint blush on his cheeks as much as the words themselves that won her, and she found herself softening.

“Oh, Logan,” she started, and then realised she didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t ready to give him heartfelt speeches, so she settled for “Well, I’ve already met your Dad, and I don’t like most of your 09er buddies. I think more sounds nice.” His eyes flicked up to hers, gauging her sincerity, before he smiled and kissed her again, a sweet, soft, slow kiss as they fell back again to the bed.

“So you are my girlfriend, then?” he asked between kisses. “I can call you honeybuns and sugar lips?”

“I may have to re-think if you really do call me honeybuns, toffee bear,” she snarked, and a genuine smile lit his eyes. He continued to list off increasingly ridiculous endearments, whispering them in her ear, until he noticed that she had gone still and stiff, and was staring up at the ceiling.

“Veronica? What is it?” he asked as her face went stony and she pulled away from him.

“What the hell is that?” she asked pointing at the ceiling. He stared up in confusion, trying in vain to figure out what had happened to the cutesy snuggling portion of the evening.

“Um… a fan?” He watched, bemused, as Veronica stood up, looking intently at the ceiling fan, before clambering down and poking cracks in the shelving. Suddenly one swung open and he was stunned to see a tv screen. Veronica pushed a button and suddenly he was looking back at himself lying on the sofa bed. “What the fuck…” he managed, before Veronica swung around, her fury propelling him almost bodily back into the cushions.

“How dare you?” she ground out. “Was this just a joke to you? Take Veronica out to the pool house and tape her? Was this going to be on youtube tomorrow? Nice acting, Logan. I’ll admit it, you almost had me.” Logan stared in shock at the girl unspooling before him, his eyes moving from her frankly terrifying glare to the screen behind her.

“No, wait. You think this is mine?” he demanded. “I swear to you, I never even knew about it.” Veronica’s blatant disbelief caused a vice to tighten around his heart, and he fumbled to find something to say that might make her stop looking at him like that.

“Please, Veronica, you have to trust me.”

“Oh, I do, do I?” she sneered. “After everything you’ve done this year?”

“I feel awful about that, you know I do,” he insisted. “Seriously, think about this for a minute. Out of the two of us, I’m the one who’s been opening up this evening – I’m the one who’s vulnerable here. Not to mention, of all the people who live here, you have got to know that I’m the one who’s least likely to want to be on camera. Here – look, I’ll give you some insurance,” he said, talking fast to convince her, scrambling forward to kneel under the camera. “Make sure it's recording. There, now I’m on camera, and you can take the tape away with you, and do whatever you want – show it to the school, put it online, hell, send it to Entertainment Tonight if you want. I am so sorry for everything I’ve done in the past year. I’m sorry for smashing your headlights. I’m sorry for letting the air out of your tires. I’m sorry for starting rumours about you. I’m sorry for making fun of your Mom. I’m sorry for bringing drugs to a party and not keeping track of them. I’m sorry I was so mad at you that I made other people think it was ok to hurt you. I’m sorry about the salt lick. I would take all over it back if I could; I wish I could do the whole last year over again so that I could be there for you the way I should have been. I was a complete asshole, and probably you should never even look at me again, but I am literally on my knees, begging you to forgive me, and to give me a chance to make it all up to you. Please, Veronica – please, I don’t know when it started but I fell for you. Hard. I think about you all the time, and all I want is a chance to try to earn your trust again. I will do absolutely anything you want.” He held her eyes for a long, silent moment before he stood up. Veronica stepped back, but he wasn’t headed towards her. He walked straight to the tv, found the vcr and pulled out the tape. Seeing a marker next to it he wrote his name and the date on it, and held it out to her. “Go on then,” he said roughly. “Add it to your blackmail collection.”

Veronica stood caught like a rabbit in the headlights. Everything about the situation, about him, was too much. There was too much fear, but also too much hope – the intensity of every one of his emotions caused panic to well up in her. Finally she forced her feet forwards, reaching out for the tape. As her fingers closed on it, Logan let out a bitter chuckle, and sat down on the edge of the mattress.

“You really don’t believe me, do you?” he muttered. “Well, congratulations, Veronica. You’ve got me right where you wanted me. Do whatever you want.” He looked down, and said quietly, “Just when I thought we were starting to run out of new ways to hurt each other.”

Veronica knew he didn’t really mean that last remark. She knew that he, more than most, was aware of the sickening variety of ways two people could harm each other. She couldn’t just let the comment sit, though. “I don’t know,” she replied, always ready to quip her way out of a serious situation. “At least I don’t think you’re a murderer. You’re in the clear for that, which is more than Duncan can say.”

If she hadn’t been looking straight at him, she might have missed the flinch. And if she was less suspicious, she might have just attributed it to Duncan being a bit of a sore spot that particular evening. But since she was Veronica, and since suspicious was practically her middle name, she did notice, and she immediately pounced. “Wait, what was that? What aren’t you telling me?”

Logan blanched and frantically tried to gather whatever shreds of self-possession he could still pull to hand. “Um – I dunno. Have I told you yet that Sean secretly thinks your butch boots are pretty hot?” he ventured with something almost resembling his trademark smirk.

“No. Something about the murder. You know I’ll find out, so just tell me,” Veronica demanded. She held Logan’s gaze, watched as his sneer was bleached with the tinge of despair she wished she had seen less of over the years.

“Oh what the hell,” he muttered. “I’m saying this to you, and I want you to see that I’m telling this to you freely, and because you know – deep down, you know – that would never do anything to hurt Lily. I mean God, Veronica, I know I get in fights, but I don’t just hurt people.” Veronica wasn’t anything like prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, but even she could admit that when Logan hit someone, it was almost always someone who was going to make sure that Logan came away just as battered as his opponent. Sometimes she thought that he did it almost on purpose, because some part of him thought he deserved to be damaged. For a lot of this year she’d agreed.

“I lied about my alibi. So did Dick and Beaver.” His words stole the breath out of Veronica’s lungs. The only reason he hadn’t been at the top of her list all year was because he was out of the country, and now…

“What happened?” she asked.

“I knew Lily was seeing someone else, and it was making me crazy. So I drove back, and I sat across the street from the carwash and I watched you two. And you were so happy… I was sitting there all miserable, and she was still so… her. I dunno, I just knew it was over. So I wrote her a letter, and I left it in a shot glass I’d bought for her, and I turned around and went back. And that’s it. If you saw the letter you’d know I wasn’t violent, I wasn’t even really angry. I was almost… relieved that I’d finally ended it for good. Honestly, I was kind of thinking of asking you out, if I could make it ok with Duncan. “

“What happened to the letter?”

“I dunno. She probably threw it away. You know Lily, she wasn’t exactly sentimental.”

“Jesus, Logan, why did you lie?”

“Because I was scared!” he exclaimed. “God, Veronica, why do you think? The boyfriend is always the main suspect, and once your Dad found out she’d been screwing around, I was going to be the jealous boyfriend.” He paused, and wondered whether to even admit the next part before bracing himself to continue. “And I thought – I thought if they started investigating me too closely, they’d find out what – what Dad does to me.” He took a shaky breath. “You know what they say about abuse victims being abusive… Maybe they’d think…” And there it was, Logan’s real dirty little secret, the first time he’d ever openly said something to her about the spectre that she’d been mulling over at the back of her mind ever since Trina’s remarks in the lobby of the Sunset Regent. She wasn’t sure she’d even really believed it until she saw what Aaron Echolls did to Trina’s boyfriend, and saw how unsurprised Logan had been by the brutality dished out by his father.

“Why are you telling me this?” Veronica demanded. “Do you know what kind of position this puts me in?”

“Because I want to show you that I trust you. And I want you to trust me, too. And I know you’ve got this thing about Lily’s death – but I also hope that you don’t really think I could kill her. Because if you do decide you can be with me, I don’t want any secrets, and that’s a pretty damn big one.”

Veronica stared at him, appalled, and was backing out of the room before she even knew she was moving. “I have to go,” she said firmly. “I have to get out of here.” She turned and ran, half expecting Logan to drag her back, to reveal the murderous tendencies that had taken out Lily… but when she got almost to the house without any sign that he was going to stop her, she slowed her steps and turned to look back. Logan sat where she’d left him, his head buried in his hands, shoulders shaking. He hadn’t come after her, had made no attempt to stop her leaving – and she thought maybe it was that that made her turn back. Because Logan had seen her at work, and he knew she wasn’t just some cute, intrepid teen detective. He knew that she had professional contacts and was perfectly capable of trying to take him down for murder if she really thought he’d killed Lily, and still he’d confessed his secret to her. So even though she was shaking with nerves, and her heart was beating so loud she thought it might be heard even over the throb of the music playing in the main house, she retraced her steps, and found herself standing in front of Logan. Cautiously, she reached a hand out and brushed it through his hair. On any other day, the look of open-mouthed shock on his face would be funny.

“Veronica? What…”

“I believe you,” Veronica heard herself saying. “I don’t know why, when I’ve suspected everyone else… but I believe you. What does it say that I can think Duncan capable of killing her but not you?”

Logan recovered from his shock enough to start brushing tears from his eyes. “Well, maybe it means you’ve been falling as fast and deep as I have?” he suggested, taking her hands and pulling her down next to him. “Look, I’ll help you look for Lily’s killer. You can be the brains and I’ll be the brawn,” he joked. “We can make this work.” Gingerly, he drew her towards him. When she didn’t protest, he pulled her down so that he was lying curled around her.

“God, Logan, what are you doing to me?” Veronica whispered, and Logan knew she didn’t mean the cuddling.

“Whatever it is, you’re doing it right back,” he replied.

 


End file.
